I tried out my new to me match built M1 on the line today at our local club where we fire a 200 yard JCG course A using the walk down and score method.

My sighters were dead on and I settled in for the 600 yard simulated string. One of my first shots went wildly into the 7 ring at 10 when the side blast of the M44 to my right caught me off guard. I think the concussion wave moved my rifle. Other than that things were all x, 10, and 9 shots so when the target black had so many holes in it I couldn't tell the last shot fired I quit looking through my scope and concentrated on shooting, feeling very good about my performance with my new rifle.

Downrange, when I examined the target I was surprised to see two shots at six o'clock in the six ring and then counted holes and came up with 15! I have never crossfired but I checked the guy to my right, a young teen with an AR and didn't see any 30 cal holes. M44 guy was all over with only two rounds in the black and I wondered if two were mine... but if so what about the other three? I trudged back to the line wondering what the heck I'd done wrong. I was shooting 168's over thrown charges of 46.5 grains of 4895 and had convinced myself that I must have severely underloaded five somehow or I only fired 15 times. I picked up 20 spent casings, ruling out that theory.

By this time it's time to fire rapid prone and run my string feeling good then look through my scope and see nada. Not the first hit! My friend Dennis is beside me looking through his scope as he coaches the youngster and asks how I did and I say, man I don't know what's going on, I hit zero and on the first stage lost five rounds. He yields a clue when he says, I was watching you shoot that great string through my scope and noticed none of your last rounds were in the black.

I look over my super duper match rifle then count elevation clicks... one...two...three! Ugh! At least I'm smart enough to have a screwdriver in my bag so I snug up the slotted nut a little and fire 90 rapid sitting and 84 standing which combined with my 133 prone round out to a 307-3x for the day.

After the match I could shove the aperture down with my thumb so after double checking a book for the procedure, tightened the nut up until I couldn't push it down.

Most of the time my problem is the loose nut behind the trigger so that's what I blame first. From now on, when I know I didn't screw up I'm going to check the equipment. I sure as heck never thought to check the sight tension on my super duper match gun thinking that's a problem for worn out rack grades, not my thoroughbred! I certainly paid the price throwing away 150 points!